The first thing I see when I look out my window is my flag of the United States of America blowing in the breeze. Often, I will sit and gaze at the flag - great focus for thinking. These are my musings and ramblings, and, on occasion, rants... I am unapologetic in my support of our military, our country and my devotion to God. I will honor them and pay tribute to them here.
Along the side bar you will find tributes to Oregon's fallen warriors.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

6 comments:

It irritates me, no it infuriates me, that they're calling this a 'terrorist' attack when all indications are that it WAS NOT. All they're doing when they say that, is feeding into the people's tendency to lump all Muslims or people of religions other than their own and ultimately cause even more violence. Don't they even care that they're making things worse by doing that? I personally know many Soldiers of Middle Eastern descent who deplore this type of thing and who PROUDLY serve this country. How dare they only increase the problems in this way.

Peters touches on the thing that irritates ME most about this... the media's speculation and concentration on their pet theory that Maj. Hasan had "Secondary PTSD" due to his association with wounded troops at Walter Reed. And then the lengthy digressions about how stressed our troops are and repeated deployments hurt the entire force, yadda, yadda. I've seen this many more times than I want or need and it makes me frickin' ILL.

Peters is also correct that it appears the Army gave this asshat excuse for a commissioned officer a MAJOR pass (no pun). I'm not saying we should launch a pogrom against all Muslims in the military... only that the services damned well better start paying attention. Hasan should have been relieved of duty after his "talk" at Walter Reed. (See The Wiki for more).

Terrorist, pure and simple, this man planned the attack, armed himself, walked into a building and started shooting innocent people, secondary PTSD, BS, this man is evil and I hope he lives so Texas can exacute him.

Actually I'm not trying to make a vague, blanket statement, or lump others into this, but I'm seeing the media do it, as well as people I'm talking to. I'm already seeing and hearing people make comments, such as "We need to imprison all the Muslims", "We need to kick all the Muslims or Middle Eastern people out of the military." These statements are being made a mere 2 days after the event, when I've already been told (remember I worked at Fort Hood and have contacts down there) they don't have all the facts yet. It's highly unlikely that they will for some time. Having worked closely with the CID and FBI there, I know how they investigate cases. They do so thoroughly so that they have what they need for a conviction. In a crime scene such as this one, they're not going to have everything they need in 2 days and probably not in 2 weeks. So, to jump to the conclusion that it's a 'terrorist attack' without all the facts, I feel is getting ahead of the game a bit. We all know how many people are like sheep and blindly follow what the media tells them. It's already happening and that's what frightens me and makes me fear that by doing so, we can only create even more problems. I'm definitely NOT defending what this vile, evil person has done. It's deplorable and I hope he's given the death penalty. Honestly I agree with Kat over at http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/11/major_dilemma_b.html>Castle of Argghhh! and their take on the situation. I think until we have move VALID information, that it's way too early to call it a terrorist attack or anything other than a crazed Soldier who didn't want to live up to the oath he took.

As far as the secondary PTSD, I call bull crap on that. Heck if that was the case, then by all rights I should have secondary PTSD. Considering that I've spent all of my adult life working as a police officer, paramedic, counselor or an advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in the military. That's over 30 years of experience dealing with traumatic events of all kinds and I've never done anything remotely like this, nor has anyone I know who work in those fields. So their claim of Secondary PTSD is bull.

As they said at Castle Argghhh that this was the actions of one individual, who chose to act in a cowardly and horrific fashion, to get himself out of a deployment. I'll say it again, he was a coward. I'm sure he fully expected that he wouldn't live, that's evidenced by him giving away his belongings. We see it all the time with those who commit suicide. That's a very strong indicator that we were trained to look for. I'm sure he knew with his deployment as close as it was, it was too late to claim conscientious objector and not have to deploy, so instead he probably figured "suicide by cop" as we called it in the business, was the only way to ensure he didn't have to deploy.

I just don't want this incident to result in an even larger tragedy. I think we've had more than our share of tragedies over the past few days.